I Never Told Him I Love Him
by BlueFireDragon17
Summary: Jackie gets a horrible phone call from Donna. Jackie/Hyde


It was the worst day of her life. Not the kind of worst day she had had so many times, when her hair was frizzy or that new dress didn't look as cute at home as it did in the dressing room. This was different; this was real, so real, and it _hurt_.

"Jackie!" Donna's voice on the phone was stressed, and shaded with panicked tears. "You've got to come, you've got to come right now."

Her heart sunk to her stomach, and she ran. She didn't bother to change out of her sweats, put on makeup, or even brush her hair. She just ran, as fast as she could, to her car. She drove way above the speed limits, not bothering to stop at the stop signs, just driving as fast as she could.

The tires squealed as she slammed the brakes in front of the hospital. The car was barely in park when she jumped out. She didn't care about the people she slammed into on the way through the door, didn't care about the fact that her shoes were muddy and her shirt torn from snagging it on the door when she rushed through it. Oh god, oh god, how could this be happening? Things like this only happened in the movies, on TV, to celebrities. This didn't happen in small Midwestern towns. This didn't happen to her.

She rushed past the nurses' station, and stopped short when she saw Donna, saw Eric and Michael and Fez just standing there, looking dazed, saw Red Foreman crying, saw Kitty holding him, trying to lend him strength she didn't have. She just dropped to the floor, slid bonelessly down and collapsed into an undignified pile. Fuck dignity. Fuck everything. Fuck it all if he was…if he was… Why, for the love of God, why? She had never known her heart could break, thought she was above that, but that pain in her chest, what else could it be? She could swear she heard an audible _crack_ with the sudden agony.

Donna walked over and sat down next to her. "Honey, we don't know what happened. He was walking from somewhere, and a car lost control, might not have even seen him; the police said the driver was so drunk, may have been passed out at the wheel. It hit him, hit him hard. He's…he's in intensive care. Only one of us is allowed in at a time. Mrs. Foreman's the only one who's been in."

Not dead. Only barely, but not dead. Maybe God was still looking out. Just maybe.

"Honey, do you want to go see him?" Mrs. Foreman walked over to Jackie knelt down, put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "If you don't want to go alone, they'd let me go in with you. Let me go talk to the charge nurse." Kitty walked off, with fire in her eyes. Red slowly walked over and held out his hand. "He needs you. You need to stand up, be strong. He needs you to walk in there, hold his hand, and tell him that you love him. Give him a reason to live." Jackie stared up at him. How? How did he know? A small, sad smile came to his face. "I see it every time you look at him. It's just how Kitty looks at me."

She took his offered hand, stood up. Kitty looked over from the nurses' station, gave a small nod. Jackie walked over, and Kitty saw just a single tear slip out of the corner of her eye. Taking her hand, she pushed open the door to the ICU.

She could barely recognize him. There was a tube in his mouth, in his nose, several in his arms. A monitor on the wall beeped softly, rhythmically, with his heart. His eyes were bruised, his cheek still had blood on it. She took a cloth from his bedside table and gently wiped that offending smear off his cheek. His sunglasses, broken and mangled, sat on that table. That crack, that agony, burned in her chest.

"How.." her voice cracked on that first word. "How bad is it? Tell me the truth, don't soften it up, sugar coat it." Kitty looked at the monitor on the wall, at Stephen's bruised face. "Honey, it's not good. He's got three broken ribs, a punctured lung, his leg is shattered, his pelvis cracked, his liver's bruised. He'll need another blood transfusion in a few hours. He's only breathing because of that tube in his mouth. But he made it through surgery, and once his punctured lung repairs itself more, if they can successfully extubate him, he has a chance."

A chance. He was always so strong, so completely untouchable. Now he was in a bed, only living because the machines were keeping him alive. Jackie tore her eyes away from Stephen's face, turned them to Kitty's. "Find out if I can give him blood for the transfusion. We're both O negative, and that's hard to come by, especially if he needs a lot." She sat down on the chair next to his bed, took his hand in hers. "Hey, baby. I'm here, I'm so so sorry. This is all my fault, and I'm so damn sorry." It was then that the tears rushed out, and she didn't think anything could stop them.

"Jackie, honey, this isn't your fault." Kitty rubbed her hand over Jackie's back, trying to comfort her. "You didn't do this."

"He was coming from my house!" she sobbed. "He was walking, didn't want to put me out of my way, wanted me to go to sleep and not have to drive him. I let him walk home, in the rain. I should've pushed him harder to let me drive him, but I was so tired, and he said he wanted to walk, let the rain and the air clear his head, didn't want the boys to notice that he was distracted. And I let him. I kissed him, said goodnight, and let him."

Kitty squeezed her shoulder. "Jackie, you know him. Once he gets his mind set on something, there's no turning it away. You couldn't have stopped him even if you'd driven next to him the whole way home. He wanted to walk, that's what he was going to do. You weren't the one who had been drinking, who drove the car that hit him." Kitty stared at Jackie's face for a second. "Oh, my God. Did you ever tell him?"

Jackie turned to look at Kitty. "Tell him what?" She looked so tired, Kitty thought. So sad, so broken, so tired. "Jackie, did you ever tell him that you love him?"

Jackie turned her eyes away, looked back at Stephen's face. "No. He would've just laughed, told me that I shouldn't define things, need to put labels on them. He definitely wouldn't have said it back, and I can't take that kind of rejection. So I just never told him." She squeezed his hand. "I wish I had, even if he laughed at me, because then he would know it. Even if he hadn't said it back, even if he'd broken my heart, I wish I'd said it because it couldn't be more broken than it is now."

Kitty felt her heart break a little bit too, when Jackie made her confession. "Then tell him," she said simply, and left Stephen's room.


End file.
